Maxi Gnauck (born 10 October 1964) is a retired

artistic gymnast Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates ...

who represented

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. With a total of 27 medals at the Olympic Games, World Championships, World Cups, and European Championships she is considered one of the most successful woman gymnasts that Germany has ever produced. In 1980 she was selected East

German Sportspersonality of the Year The German Sportspersonality of the Year has been chosen annually since 1947, with separate awards made for men and women. The record holder is tennis player Steffi Graf, who won five awards. Swimmer Michael Groß, tennis player Boris Becker, a ...

. Her parents were expecting a boy and they planned to name him Max so, when the baby turned out to be a girl, they simply added an 'i', creating an uncommon name for Germany. When Maxi was five, her mother took her to a gymnastics centre in their area. By age eight, Maxi had won her first medals at the Kreisspartakiade. When she was nine she changed her club to

SC Dynamo Berlin The Sports Club Dynamo Berlin was an East German sports club that existed from 1954 to 1991. It was the largest sports club of SV Dynamo, the sports association of the security agencies. The club was disbanded after German reunification and even ...

, where she was coached by Jürgen Heritz. Considered one of the best

uneven bars The uneven bars or asymmetric bars is an artistic gymnastics apparatus. It is made of a steel frame. The bars are made of fiberglass with wood coating, or less commonly wood. The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is UB or ...

competitors of all time, Maxi was also an excellent tumbler. She was one of the first female gymnasts to perform a triple twist on

floor A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the expected load ...

. In April 1986, Maxi officially announced her retirement and began a four-year course in sports coaching at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

. In 1988 she was severely injured while sliding down a waterslide while working as an aide at a children's summer camp by the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...

. She broke her C5

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

and was nearly paralysed. Three vertebrae were later reinforced with a metal plate. Facing a strong competition after the reunification of East Germany and West Germany, she first took temporary coaching positions in South Africa and Great Britain, both for a few months in 1990. From 1993 until 2004 she worked as a full-time coach at the Harksheide Gymnastics Center in Norderstedt near

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

. Since 2005 she has worked at the Artistic and Apparatus Gymnastics Center (Kunst- und Gerätturnzentrum) at Liestal in Switzerland. In 2000, she was inducted into the

International Gymnastics Hall of Fame The International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, located in Oklahoma City, USA, is a hall of fame dedicated to honoring the achievements and contributions of the world's greatest competitors, coaches and authorities in artistic gymnastics. The early IGHO ...

. She is the first German gymnast to be awarded that honour.

Results

References

External links

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Maxi in Switzerland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gnauck, Maxi 1964 births Living people Gymnasts from Berlin People from East Berlin German female artistic gymnasts Gymnasts at the 1980 Summer Olympics Olympic gymnasts of East Germany Olympic gold medalists for East Germany Olympic silver medalists for East Germany Olympic bronze medalists for East Germany Olympic medalists in gymnastics Medalists at the 1980 Summer Olympics World champion gymnasts Medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships European champions in gymnastics 20th-century German women

Results

See also

References

External links